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'Ghostbusters': Paul Feig Reveals New Proton Pack Design

Principal photography on the Ghostbusters movie reboot got started near mid-June 2015, and it took less than a day for the first set photos to leak online. Cast member Leslie Jones has yet to surface in set pics for the film, though Kate McKinnon (Saturday Night Live) has already been spotted looking like an especially mad, mad scientist type on the Ghostbusters reboot set, alongside costars Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy (whose appearances were more down to Earth by comparison).

Of course, leaked set photos provide neither context nor a good idea of how the polished final product will look, which is why more and more comic book movie directors have started just posting set images online themselves (Bryan Singer with X-Men: Apocalypse being a recent example). Ghostbusters co-writer/director Paul Feig is following their example, having now both announced the start of production and unveiled the new Ghostbusters team's uniforms via social media.

Feig has long made it clear that his intention with the Ghostbusters reboot is to tow the line between innovation and homage, and that much is evident in the design of the ghost-catching squad's outfits - slightly different, but otherwise fairly identical to what the original Ghostbusters crew (Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, and Ernie Hudson) wore back in Ivan Reitman's 1984 film and its sequel in 1989. The same goes for the new proton packs that are being used by Wiig, McCarthy, Jones, and McKinnon in the reboot - the design for which Feig has also now unveiled, through his Twitter account (see below).

There are certainly differences between the original Ghostbusters' proton packs and the reboot's design (as savvy, longtime fans will no doubt pick up), but for the the large part they're pretty similar - with the reboot's version of ghost-busting hardware perhaps being comparatively less bulky and overall a bit more contemporary (read: streamlined) in its structure, as Feig previous indicated it could be. One also wonders whether the new proton packs will be more or less destructive than their predecessors (not to mention, how the packs' firepower will look brought to life by way of modern, big-budget, CGI effects), for related reasons.

Similarly, the issue of collateral damage caused by the Ghostbusters (and their tools) during the course of their poltergeist-catching duties may be played for different comedic effect in the reboot than it was in 1984, given how much times have changed since then. That's one of several ideas that Feig and co-writer Katie Dippold (The Heat) can play around with in the Ghostbusters reboot, in order to craft a film that (fingers crossed) works as both playful franchise update and entertaining standalone supernatural action/comedy.